Sunday, April 12, 2009

Thoughts on America.

I don't know if it's because I was listening to Bill Bryson read his book I'm a Stranger Here Myself (a collection of columns he wrote about America) or what, but as I was driving home today I noticed some things.

As I was driving down the NY Throughway, I glanced to the right of the road and felt a thrill go through me when I saw a hawk eating a dead animal. I thought it was so cool and I think the word "majestic" might have skittered across my mind, but then I realized something. It's really sad that such a natural occurance is cause for such wonder, especially because it is something we seem to think of as rare. At least I do; I've seen a hawk eating an animal three times in my life, all in the past year. We've paved over so much of our country that birds of prey are almost a sort of entertainment, especially when they've got something bloody in their talons. I also realized the thing it was eating was probably road kill.

Another thing I noticed, and this one is about our eating habits, was in the Gulf Mart at the Ludlow Plaza on the Mass Pike. I was looking around for a small snack and I wanted almonds, so I was looking in that general area. Do you know they didn't have any plain, raw almonds? Everything was salted, and spiced with some unnatural flavoring that shouldn't have been on a nut in the first place. I think one of them was jalepeno flavored. Why can't we just get almonds because we like the taste of almonds? If I wanted jalepeno-flavored something I'd have looked for a jalepeno. I wanted something that tasted like almonds. The sad thing is I probably could have found some sort of food that was almond flavored.

Anyway, those were a couple of thoughts I had. I know, I'm so poignant.

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About Me

I'm a graduate of Ithaca College, where I studied English (and various other things), and a graduate of Simmons College, where I earned my library science master's degree. I'm now a teen librarian in a semi-rural area about 40 minutes outside of Boston. I'm also a huge dork.